We’re several weeks away from SAP CX LIVE, the main SAP Customer Experience event. It’s time to plan your agenda. There are about 350 sessions in two days, and all have merit. In this article, I highlight some of the sessions I’m most looking forward to.
Let’s start with some general recommendations on how to prepare for the summit. In the past, I organized two large IT events in Russia, each with thousands of attendees, and participated as a speaker in dozens of others. This experience enables me to see the summit from different perspectives.
- Don’t forget business cards. Take a bag with a shoulder strap or be empty-handed. Remember that SAP will likely give you a bag full of handouts. Carrying two bags all day is exhausting. Have a pen, a charger, and an external battery for your phone. Have a place for other people’s business cards.
- With 350 sessions in two days and thousands of visitors, the schedule is going to be dense, with a lot of parallel sessions. Be prepared for schedule conflicts, delays, and unexpected meetings. In the case of session schedule conflicts, I recommend prioritizing them in advance: sessions that are not going to be available as replays probably should not be postponed. SAP doesn’t publish all the recordings, and many sessions are not recorded at all. Hopefully, some of the 2018 sessions will be available as replays.
- Personally, I prefer to take photos of business cards, printed materials, and all interesting slides.
- I recommend planning your schedule beforehand, as accurately as possible.
- Some sessions can be limited to a certain number of attendees due to safety requirements. So make sure you get your seat early. For “open-space” presentations it is not so critical, although you can have trouble hearing or seeing the presenter while standing behind a crowd. For lecture rooms, the organizers won’t let you in if there are too many people inside or all seats are occupied.
- Some sessions advertise third-party services. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is good to know that beforehand. Some presentations are of the “look how cool we are” type. They tell you nothing useful except that the company or speaker is cool and mighty. Try to recognize this before the show starts.
I thought hard before picking a set of sessions to recommend. Of course, the choice is quite subjective. The sessions I picked are mainly technical because they are fully within the scope of my interests. There is a lot of other interesting stuff, such as product demos, presentations, and master classes, that I haven’t mentioned but that you may think I should have. I needed to keep the list as short as possible, and I tried to avoid parallel sessions; otherwise, it would be useless. You can’t be in two places at once. You can find the full list here: https://sessioncatalog.sapevents.com/go/agendabuilder.sessions/.
Wednesday
(Wed, 12:30) Look Ahead at the Road Map for SAP Commerce Cloud
When: Wed, 12:30 p.m. – 01:10 p.m.
Where: Customer Experience Area
Speakers:
- Lisa de Souza, Lead for Product Management, SAP Customer Experience Commerce, SAP Customer Experience
- Riad Hijal, Global VP Commerce Strategy and Solution Mgmt, SAP Customer Experience
The original description from SAP: “Get an overview of the guiding principles and strategy for innovating the SAP Commerce Cloud solution. You’ll gain insight into the short- and long-term road map, as well as key focus areas such as machine learning, customer experience, product content management, and integration. Join this session and learn how SAP Commerce Cloud is enabling you for success.”
My two cents: It is a great opportunity to ask about the roadmap and its rationale. I recommend that you prepare in advance and look at the current SAP Commerce Cloud roadmap (https://www.sap.com/products/roadmaps.html). The roadmap is dated September 2018. I don’t think we’ll see any significant changes in the slides in the next two weeks, and it is just a couple of slides.
(Wed, 12:15) Follow the Best Route to SAP Commerce Cloud: A Clinic Session
When: Wed, 12:15 p.m. – 01:15 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speaker:
- Juergen Albertsen, Chief Architect SAP Commerce, SAP Customer Experience
The original description from SAP: “Bring your challenges, ideas, and questions. Join this open and unformatted discussion with the experts and discover how you can make the transition to the cloud.”
My comments: Juergen is one of the authors of Hybris / SAP Commerce Cloud. I strongly recommend joining him at this session, especially if you are a solution architect.
(Wed, 01:30, TT) Experience Project “Kyma” as a Developer
When: Wed, 01:30 p.m. – 02:30 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speaker:
- Borja Clemente Castanera, Senior Developer, SAP Customer Experience
The original description from SAP: “Walk through project “Kyma” from source to deployment. Learn about the pillars of “Kyma,” such as documentation, UI, and CLI. Watch the customization of an example and the deployment to the registry using documentation. See the service deployed to the UI and exposed and find out about tracing.”
My comments: Kyma addresses the need to provide a lightweight framework for building custom extensions to SAP’s commerce portfolio based on cloud-native technologies and eventing. It looks like this workshop is a good technical introduction to the new SAP technology.
(Wed, 02:45) Combine Two Winners: Integrating Marketing and Commerce
When: Wed 02:45 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speakers:
- Fernando Redondo, Technical Trainer, SAP Customer Experience
- Nidhi Agarwal, Product Owner – SAP Marketing Enablement, SAP Customer Experience
Official description from SAP: “Get an overview of the technical stack and architecture of SAP Marketing Cloud and SAP Commerce solutions and their touch points. Learn how to enrich the visitor profile, personalize a Web shop, and show product recommendations and offers. See how to replicate consumers, products, and orders to SAP Marketing Cloud with how-to details followed by a live demo.”
My opinion: This is a live demo and Q&A session. Great for those taking their first steps in SAP Marketing projects. If I were present at the session, I’d ask Nidhi and Fernando about using knowledge-based recommender systems and how they can be leveraged or integrated with collaborative filtering-based methods supported by SAP Marketing. The simplest example is creating a rule saying that any iPhone accessories cannot be recommended for a shopping cart containing an Android phone, but a Samsung quick charger is a good complement for a Samsung phone.
(Wed, 04:00) Find Out Everything You Wanted to Know About Implementing SAP Commerce Cloud But Were Afraid to Ask
When: Wed, 04:00 p.m. – 05:00 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speakers:
- Richard Ashby, Global Program Manager, SAP Customer Experience
- Bruno Siqueira, Senior Technical Consultant, SAP Services
- Valentina Reynaud, Solution Architect, SAP
Official description: Sometimes things get lost in the hype. With the release of SAP Commerce Cloud solutions, you may find yourself wondering about some things. Chances are, so are many others. We cover some of the big questions around implementation that we hear time and again to help you see the blue sky behind the clouds.
My comments: This is a technical one-hour master class from Richard, Bruno, and Valentina, one of two presented by them. The description is too broad, but it is a great opportunity to pick their brains.
(Wed, 05:15) Take the SAP Commerce Solution to Next Level: A Performance Improvement Case Study
When: Wed 05:15 p.m. – 06:15 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speaker:
- Matt Ruan, Technology Senior Consultant, SAP China Co., Ltd.
Official description: Go step by step with the SAP Customer Experience Expert Services team and find out how they helped a site perform with 55,000 active users with a theoretical ability to place 140,000 orders in 15 minutes. Hear about the next steps to reach 100,000 concurrent active customers.
My comments: Performance optimization is one of the most frequently raised topics when the number of cores is limited by the license, but customer traffic is increasing. SAP Commerce Cloud has its limits, but there are ways to make it more efficient: page fragment caching and DTO caching. For me personally, the most interesting topic is how to scale the database up for high traffic. Specifically, handling performance issues for a B2B system, where all sessions have a unique user and platform caches won’t work well. SAP Commerce Cloud out of the box is not capable of working with separate data sources — possibly, SAP has a solution for that? I would also ask Matt about the promotion engine in the setup with 140,000 orders in 15 minutes. The promotion engine cannot be moved to its own cluster, and it works in stateless mode. It consumes a lot of memory, and per-request initialization is slow too.
This master class conflicts with another master class in the same technical track, “Extend SAP Commerce Cloud Solutions Using SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory”.
(Wed, 05:15) Extend SAP Commerce Cloud Solutions Using SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory
When: Wed 05:15 p.m. – 06:15 p.m.
Where: Technical track.
Speaker:
- Brendan Dobbs, Development Architect, SAP Customer Experience
Official description: “Learn about developing and provisioning microservices for solutions that are part of the SAP Customer Experience portfolio. See examples of services consumed directly from the front end and services that replace core functionality. Other examples demonstrate UI extensions and the integration of multiple applications.”
My comments: Brendan Dobbs is one of the pioneers in Hybris, a consultant with a very strong technical background and a deep understanding of how Hybris/SAP Commerce works under the hood. This presentation is mainly about microservice architecture, but I am sure that the things he presents will be at the convergence of different technologies, including SAP Commerce.
This master class conflicts with another master class in the same technical track, “Take the SAP Commerce Solution to Next Level: A Performance Improvement Case Study”.
Thursday
(Thu, 11:30) Take a Look Behind the Scenes of the New SAP Commerce Cloud
When: Thu, 11:30 a.m. – 11:50 a.m.
Where: Customer Experience Area
Speaker:
- Axel Grossmann, Enterprise Architect, SAP Customer Experience
Official description: “SAP Commerce Cloud has undergone many enhancements and refinements. Learn how we use technologies like Kubernetes and Docker to turn SAP Commerce Cloud into a highly scalable public cloud solution. Join this session to hear about the enhancements we have made to the platform architecture that underpins the new SAP Commerce Cloud.”
My comments: This is one of the most interesting presentations for me. Due to its cloud nature, this product from SAP is a black box, and understanding the details of the architecture will help you see the bigger picture and make better decisions.
(Thu, 12:15) Search for the Relevant Search Result
When: Thu 12:15 p.m. – 01:15 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speakers:
- Stephan Beutel, Technology Senior Consultant, SAP
- Miguel Vieira Ferreira, Senior Technical Consultant – Expert Services, SAP
The original description from SAP: “The quest for the relevant search result starts and stops right here in this hands-on session. Join senior consultants from the SAP Customer Experience organization to learn how to optimize Solr searching in your SAP Commerce solution.”
My comments: This is a great opportunity to learn more about Solr-Hybris integration and tuning Solr for specific tasks. Personally, I’m interested in such challenging topics as user-specific search results, when some results are hidden for some users because of a lack of access, and field-wise indexing, for the case when the data retrieval phase for the Solr document is too slow or resource-intensive.
This master class conflicts with the 20-minute presentation “Get Acquainted with the Chatbot for SAP Commerce Cloud” by Karsten Illing.
(Thu, 12:30) Get Acquainted with the Chatbot for SAP Commerce Cloud
When: Thu, 12:30 p.m. – 12:50 p.m.
Where: Customer Experience Area
Speaker:
- Karsten Illing, Product Owner of SAP Enterprise Chatbot, SAP Customer Experience
Official description: “Be one of the first to get your hands on the new front-office chatbot for SAP Customer Experience solutions. Built using SAP Conversational AI services, the bot is preintegrated into the SAP Commerce Cloud solution and helps retailers and brands to enrich their experiences with a new, messenger-based commerce channel.”
My comments: The topic of conversational commerce attracts a lot of attention: a number of large retailers are already experimenting with chatbots, and there are great results. Amazon Echo, Google Allo, and a lot of bot frameworks are ready to integrate with any e-commerce platform. SAP developed its own bot platform (https://www.sap.com/products/conversational-ai.html) and integrated it with its current solutions. For me, it is interesting to know if these bots support dialogs, meaning the ability to build a context and use it in conversations, and whether they could be used to enrich customer information through questions. In addition to being a product owner of Enterprise Chatbot, Karsten Illing is also an experienced solution architect, so I expect he is a great point of contact for any technical questions on the topic.
(Thu, 01:30) Solve Personalization Challenges with SAP Commerce Cloud, Context-Driven Services
When: Thu, 01:30 p.m. – 02:30 p.m.
Where: Technical track
Speakers:
- Markus Balsam, Development Architect, SAP Customer Experience
- Sebastian Mahr, Lead Architect, SAP Customer Experience
Official description: “We present an end-to-end closed-loop personalization use case with a “behind the scenes” technical deep-dive on how to connect storefronts in SAP Commerce Cloud with context-driven services and how to solve advanced personalization challenges under load at scale. Get insights into lambda functions, real-time reporting, and real-time segmentation.”
My comments: Context-Driven Services is part of SAP Cloud Service. Integrating these services with SAP Commerce allows you to capture multiple interactions and commerce events from a storefront and process them in Context-Driven Services Foundation in real time. This is a new name for Hybris Profile via YaaS. If you are not familiar with Hybris Profile but are considering using SAP Cloud Service, this workshop is a great start.
(Wed, 02:00) Look Ahead at the Technology Strategy for SAP Commerce Cloud
When: Wed, 02:00 p.m. – 02:20 p.m.
Where: Customer Experience Area
Speaker:
- Juergen Albertsen, Chief Architect SAP Commerce, SAP Customer Experience
Official description: “As the market requirements for commerce platforms continue to evolve, we are continuously enhancing the platform architecture for the SAP Commerce Cloud portfolio. Join us for an overview of the technology strategy design we’re following to enable super-scalability, flexibility, and agility. See the roadmap for the platform architecture of SAP Commerce Cloud.”
My comments: This presentation is a great opportunity to see the roadmap through the eyes of the chief architect of SAP Commerce, Juergen Albertsen. He has been working with hybris from the very beginning and knows everything 🙂
(Wed, 04:00) Take a Deep Dive into SAP Commerce Cloud
When: Wed, 04:00 p.m. – 05:00 p.m., Thu, 02:45 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.
Where: Technical Track
Speaker:
- Axel Grossmann, Enterprise Architect, SAP Customer Experience
Official description: “Look behind the scenes of SAP Commerce Cloud v2. Watch a demo that shows you how you can customize, build, deploy, scale, and monitor your solution. Learn how we leverage and extend technologies like Kubernetes and Docker to turn it into a true cloud solution.”
My comments: Axel Grossmann is one of the longest-serving members of the Hybris team. I think his workshop is a must-attend session. If you want to understand the concepts and architecture of SAP Commerce Cloud in full, be sure to come.
(Thu, 04:00) Migrate to SAP Commerce Cloud
When: Thu, 04:00 p.m. – 05:00 p.m.
Where: Technical track
Speakers:
- Richard Ashby, Global Program Manager, SAP Customer Experience
- Bruno Siqueira, Senior Technical Consultant, SAP Services
- Valentina Reynaud, Solution Architect, SAP
Official description: “Whether you’re a customer of our on-premise solutions, new to the SAP Customer Experience portfolio, or running a legacy SAP Commerce Cloud solution, this session is for you. We outline the technical recommended practices we have built up from our experience completing cross-solution migrations.”
My comments: This master class should shed light on the differences between the on-premise and cloud versions of SAP Commerce Cloud. It is marked as “technical” and “one-hour master class”, so I expect it to be very focused on architecture rather than business features. In the absence of information about the cloud version in the documentation, this master class is going to be really interesting.